Iacon's Finest
by Steelcircle
Summary: Spinister wasn't always a Decepticon. IDW G1 comics continuity.


**Iacon's Finest**

Spinister had never been the pride of the Iacon Police Academy. He left that to other, showier students. He had been content to garner top notch scores in silence. He had been content as a highway cop, where 'speed limit enforced by aircraft' had meant exactly that. When he had been pulled for SWAT, Spinister had offered no argument. If he really did have the talent, it would have been a shame to let it go to waste. They had added a laser rifle to his arsenal and trained him as a sniper. Spinister remembered long hours on top of lonely, windswept towers, waiting patiently, watching for any sign of a threat to those overpaid dignitaries who deserved such security. When he looked through the scope of his rifle, pulling the trigger was easy. It was perhaps the definition of impersonality. He was miles away, many times. A life, filled with all the experiences of friendship and joy, was nothing but another target, imbued with as much life and inherent worth as a painted circle. There were times when he let his gaze rest on his very own representative, the one he was supposed to be protecting, and knew, without doubt, that he could pull the trigger if a crackling voice over his radio but asked it of him.

The day that Spinister knew that fact for certain, he knew that he had to get out of this career. His coworkers worried about him, and perhaps their constant concern had finally penetrated his cranium. He terrified them, and some part of him knew that he shouldn't, although more of him wondered why he should care. They were right to be afraid. They were nothing but targets. Spinister was not sure what he would do after he handed in his transfer request and his rifle. Perhaps he would be a highway cop again.

Instead, the rifle was handed back to him, and Spinister found himself in a crowded arena, watching glorified murder. In his cold, detached way, he knew exactly how he had arrived here. They had transferred him to the care of Digwell. Digwell told him about their concerns about Kaon; how they needed a man on the inside. If Spinister but did this service, he could retire and live off a handsome pension or return to being a highway cop, anything that he wanted. Spinister didn't need the incentive, although he didn't say so. The job clearly needed to be done, although he had his concerns about being the one to do it. Spinister remembered what Digwell had said, "You have a killer's optics. You'll fit right in."

Spinister was sick when he watched the arena matches. He was sicker when he looked in the mirror and knew that Digwell was right. Spinister didn't look like the street toughs, the ones who would pop a machine for looking at them funny, but there was no warmth in his own stare, no hint of a conscience. Perhaps his soul had died in the crossfire of one too many a clusterfrag. He couldn't begin to count the number of times people had, on the street, tried to hire him as an assassin.

The crowd was cheering again, and Spinister cheered as well. Automatically, the name Megatron was on his voicebox, before he even knew it was there. Hate did not describe what Spinister felt for that gladiator and all that he represented. Loathing ran deeper, and perhaps it was the word. Spinister killed, but he prided himself on the cleanliness of his kills and, above all, the quickness. Those who died by Spinister's rifle were in the Allspark before they even felt the shot. The arena glorified cruelty. Cleanliness and quickness had no place here. The longer a fight could be dragged out, the more brutal the blow, the more the crowd loved it. They made a show of murder and distributed the videos as snuff on the streets. Megatron was the worst of all of them. Spinister was sick to his fuel tank, sick in a way that he didn't think a helicopter born to nausea could be. He couldn't even take in a drink, the way so many of the audience did. His 'friends' ragged him so, but Spinister claimed it got in the way of the cheering, and he thought that they bought his sad little story.

Indeed, Spinister cheered with all the enthusiasm of a true fan, someone who gloried in the pain and mutilation. Anything less would have had him thrown in Mixmaster's rotating drum and dissolved for a traitor to the underground or perhaps smashed in the arena itself. His 'friend' Stranglehold urged him to try out, insisted that Spinister had some potential. Stranglehold was respected as a perfectly legitimate wrestler, and yet he was down here, watching something that could ruin his career forever. Spinister always refused. The crowd would kill him if he ever did. He told Stranglehold, time again, that he couldn't do a protracted, flamboyant kill like they wanted, like they craved, demanded even. Mentally, Spinister wished that he could add that he couldn't kill in cold fuel, couldn't kill someone who didn't really deserve it, but he knew better. He was a loaded weapon, waiting for the signal to fire, no more and no less. His membership as a decent living being expired the day that he stopped seeing others as the same.

If he could but fool them a little longer, Spinister could escape this. He would take that retirement pension, and he would never look back. Perhaps he might even be able to redeem himself as a functioning member of society. He had always liked sensor theory. Perhaps he could slip into the Iacon Academy of Science and Technology. Spinister shut down his optics for a moment, contemplating what it might be like to feel something again other than horror and revulsion; to emerge from his condemned numbness.

The kill happened while his optics were off, and Stranglehold hit Spinister in the back of the head, snapping him out of his pleasant if distant daydream. Stranglehold roared, "Wake up, you spinny ninny. Told you that you needed a cube!"

Spinister stared bleakly out at the arena, at the mangled body seeping out fuel and the triumphant victor, glowing with dark satisfaction more radiant than the pink fuel that clung to his frame. He didn't need a cube. He needed ten, so that he could purge this memory from his databanks.

* * *

Spinister found the bodies of Bumper and Fastback. 'Found' was maybe not the right word. He was a handy camp-follower, so he was told to dispose of the bodies. 'Found' would have implied that he was looking for them. Spinister had no idea they were out there, what sort of mission they might have been undertaking, but for all that he had been out of touch with his handler and anything resembling the polite world for years, he could still guess. He wondered if perhaps he could have done something for them. Well, he could have ended it quicker. Spinister wasn't sure how helpful that would have been. There wasn't enough of Bumper's face left to say what kind of pain he might have endured.

He felt numb, mainly. If thought too much about the dead operatives that he was, even now, feeding piece by piece into a trash compactor, he started thinking about his own situation. He could end up dead, just like them, in the tick of a processor. Maybe he wouldn't end up dead just like them. They were just spies. He was, what was it - a traitor? Oh yes. They would call him that. Spinister expected he would be properly tortured, and he knew what that meant, now. Digwell had no idea what these people were like. The tapes weren't the half of it.

Even if he could have felt it through the cold that gripped him, Spinister could not let himself feel any pity for poor Fastback and Bumper, couldn't let his rotors quiver. He knew the price of failure. Spinister let Bumper's last finger fall into the compactor, slammed the button, and walked away.

* * *

He met Digwell at their previously agreed upon meeting place, below a rundown overpass. Spinister could see how nervous Digwell was about the area; his shovel twitches gave it all away. A facemask meant nothing if one forgot about one's other reactions, Spinister knew from experience, an experience that had nearly gotten him killed. For his own part, Spinister stalked a circle around Digwell, neglecting even a greeting.

Digwell tried to put some air of command into his questions, "What do you have for me?"

Spinister removed a holocube and offered, "Names. You wouldn't believe who is tangled up in these games."

Digwell didn't take the holocube, not yet. Instead, he asked, "Do you have who is behind it?"

"No. I'm not in that deep," Spinister replied. "But we can bust these, put a hurting on them."

With all the callousness of a pit fighter, Digwell shook his head and directed, "No good. You go back. They'll just find new recruits."

Spinister felt his blades splay out with shock that he didn't want to show, and he protested, "I did my time! I couldn't get in any closer."

Digwell, in a patient and patronizing tone of voice, explained, "Spinister, you are invisible. You do not exist." He paused and rubbed his chin. "Well, that's not quite right. You do not exist as a member of the Iacon Police. You do exist as a wanted murderer. Spinister of the Iacon Police does not and will not exist until I say so. I say you go back, unless you'd like to hang."

Spinister's blades ratcheted up, and his fingers clenched to fists. He protested, keeping his voice down to a harsh whisper, "Frag it and blow it out your exhaust. You can't do this! If I go back, they will find me out, and they will kill me. That's that."

"I can, and I have to, Spinister. It's not enough." He gestured to the holocube.

Slowly, Spinister repeated, "They will kill me if I return as anything but one of them, you slagger."

Digwell tried to sound sympathetic as he asked, "Do you want to hang? It's not just murder. There's a pretty long list on you that I whipped up for your cover."

Unbridled, unseemly rage blanked out his optics, and Spinister found his hands wrapped around Digwell's neck. He husked in Digwell's audio, "Let's add killing an officer of the law for real to that list, then." Digwell flailed and lashed out, ungainly and pained. Spinister let his hands bite into Digwell's neck and ignored the savage kicks and punches that dented his armour. He could feel the fuel lines and electrical cables through the thin neck armour that was swiftly crumpling under the pressure from his hands. His fingers hurt as his own plating buckled from the strain. So this was how sheer and utter ugliness and brutality felt, feeling up close and personal a life slip through his aching fingers. He felt like retching, as if he'd supped on tainted fuel. This was nothing like pulling a trigger from behind a scope. He wanted to go douse himself in solvent for a few good days.

Spinister twisted his hands and snapped Digwell's neck. He let his handler fall at his feet and threw the holocube down on his body. Then, Spinister withdrew something else he picked up on the underground, a flamethrower. The weapon was a horrible piece of work. He had caught it, tossed up from the pits during a fight. Spinister didn't know why he kept it; a flamethrower wasn't a sporting souvenir like an out-of-bounds prismaball. Flicking the dial up, he didn't leave Digwell in a puddle. He just left a puddle.

Spinister wouldn't know the word for some time, but he took his first steps as a Decepticon then.

**The End**


End file.
